The Making Of Cruising (1980) - William Friedkin Documentary

In his research, Friedkin worked with members of the Mafia, who at the time owned many of the city’s gay bars.[3] Al Pacino was not Friedkin’s first choice for the lead; Richard Gere had expressed a strong interest in the part, and Friedkin had opened negotiations with Gere’s agent. Gere was Friedkin’s choice because he believed that Gere would bring an androgynous quality to the role that Pacino could not.[4] The Motion Picture Association of America originally gave Cruising an X rating. Friedkin claims he took the film before the MPAA board “50 times“ at a cost of $50,000 and deleted 40 minutes of footage from the original cut before he secured an R rating.[2] The deleted footage, according to Friedkin, consisted entirely of footage from the clubs in which portions of the film were shot and consisted of “[a]bsolutely graphic material showed the most graphic homosexuality with Pacino watching, and with the intimation that he may have been participating.“[3] In some discussions, Friedkin claims that the missing 40 minutes had no effect on the story or the characterizations,[2] but in others he states that the footage created “mysterious twists and turns (which [the film] no longer takes)“, that the suspicion that Pacino’s character may have himself become a killer was made more clear and that the missing footage simultaneously made the film both more and less ambiguous. When Friedkin sought to restore the missing footage for the film’s DVD release, he discovered that United Artists no longer had it. He believes that UA destroyed the footage.[2] Some obscured sexual activity remains visible in the film as released, and Friedkin intercut a few frames of gay pornography into the first scene in which a murder is depicted. (film)